The Cities of Eternal Fog

Walk in darkness, hunt in fog.

Fighting Style Sniping

Effect: A sniper is the antithesis of a gunfighter,
patient and serene rather than swift and ruthless. Your
character, through life-long experience or intensive
military training, is patient and skilled enough to spend
hours staring through a rifle scope before taking one perfect
shot that decides the fate of a hostage or a nation.

Dots purchased in this Merit allow access to special
combat maneuvers. Each maneuver is a prerequisite for
the next. So, your character can’t have “Battlesight
Zero” until she has “On Scope.” The maneuvers and
their effects are described below, most of which are based
on the Firearms Skill. All of the following maneuvers
work only with rifles (including assault rifles).

On Scope (•): Your character has an intuitive
understanding of long-range ballistics and has spent
countless hours straining to pick out tiny details through
a telescopic sight. The maximum bonus she may receive
from aiming (see the World of Darkness Rulebook,

162) is increased to her Composure +1 for semithe
automatic and automatic rifles and her Composure +2
for break-action, bolt-action and lever-action rifles. In
addition, when using a scope or other long-range optic
device (e.g., binoculars), she receives a +2 bonus to all
perception rolls (see the World of Darkness Rulebook,
p. 45).

Battlesight Zero (••): Once your character is
familiar with the capabilities of a rifle, she can wring
unparalleled performance from it. Whenever your character
sights in a rifle (see “Sighting Tools,” p. 164), she
doubles the number of attacks that receive the bonus
from this process. In addition, whenever she makes an
attack with a rifle that receives this bonus, the weapon’s
short range is increased by five yards times her Wits,
medium range by twice this amount and long range by
three times this amount.

Focused Shot (•••): Your character can lurk motionless
in ambush for days, ignoring sleep deprivation,
temperature extremes and even life-threatening injuries
in the name of putting lead on target. When making an
aimed shot, she may ignore an amount of penalties for
wounds, drugs, disease, pain, fatigue, environmental
conditions and similar factors equal to her Resolve. For
example, if your character has Resolve 4, has two points
of Health remaining (–2), has gone without sleep for 36
hours (–2) and has ingested strong hallucinogens (–3),
her aimed shots suffer only a –3 penalty instead of the
–7 that affects all her other dice pools.

Tactical Intervention (••••): Split-second timing
and nerves of steel enable your character to take
advantage of the smallest opportunities for accurate shot
placement. When making an aimed shot, all penalties
for shooting into close combat and for concealment are
halved, rounding down.

One Shot, One Kill (•••••): When your character
picks up her rifle, people fall down. It’s just that simple.
When making an aimed shot, do not add the rifle’s Damage
rating to the attack dice pool (though “9 again” or
“8 again” still applies if it would normally). Instead, if
the attack succeeds, add the rifle’s Damage rating as
extra successes. Drawback: Spend one Willpower per
attack. Note that this Willpower expenditure does not
add three dice to the attack.